Tag Archives | new weird

The Ersthile are the abandoned. Having failed their responsibility to protect of the primeval tree, they were abandoned by their creator to seek meager shelter as they faded away under fallen leaves and soil. That is, until they begin to awake.

With this theme in mind, Catling returned to the surreal world he created in The Vohr, picking up right where he left off. Like the first novel, Catling develops his fiction with a dash of history. In lieu of Muybridge, we are introduced to William Blake. Unlike the first novel, this story is tighter—the plot threads are more tightly intertwined.

The final scene sets up the third novel, The Cloven, to be released next year. I can hardly wait.

Rachel and Wick live in a nightmare. The world they can’t remember—except through drug-like memory beetles inserted into their ears—has been destroyed and abandoned by The Company. Their lives have been reduced to scavenging the debris and detritus of failed biotech experiments. Then Rachel found Borne on the flanks of Mord, a multi-story bear-human hybrid experiment. Did I mention that Mord can fly?

If you’re reading this second paragraph, you might enjoy the New Weird genre described by Rose O’Keefe as “cutting edge speculative fiction with a literary slant.” Vandermeer’s Borne is not meaningless fiction. Publisher’s Weekly elevates it beyond weird fiction. Borne is “weird literature.”

The ethical dilemmas that Rachel and Wick face resonate with those that humanity faces in real life. This is all wrapped in a mystery story that will keep you frantically turning pages until you reach the end.

Like his earlier Southern Reach Trilogy, Borne is a compelling work of New Weird literary fiction that challenges the reader to see the real world in a new light.

The Southern Reach Trilogy begins with what sounds like the set-up for a joke: a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist walk into … but this story is no joke. These four people comprise the twelfth expedition into Area X, a place cut off from the rest of the world, accessible only through a “doorway” in the Southern Reach.

I paused before selecting a genre for this review. It’s equal parts science fiction, fantasy, horror, dystopian fiction, and mystery. The first book in particular, Annihilation, keeps you revising your views as more data comes to light. This is page turning fiction at its best.

As I read, H. P. Lovecraft kept coming to mind. Both Lovecraft and Vandermeer wrestle with the idea of an unspeakable, incomprehensible horror from outside any human frame of reference. How do we come to grips with something wholly other? Area X represents an existential threat to humanity.

Area X is one of the most unique and gripping trilogies I have ever read.